Fares on the city–run public buses in Greenville are subsidized by city tax revenues, but among the beneficiaries of ...

shunhe on July 31, 2020

Hi @JessicaR,

Thanks for the question! So let’s go over the argument first. We fares on some public buses in Greenville are subsidized with city tax revenues. But some people benefit from this who commute from outside the city to jobs in Greenville. So some city councilors have argued that city taxes should be used to benefit the people who pay them (or the people in the city), and thus, the bus fares should be raised enough to cover the cost of the service.

Now we’re being asked for something that does NOT weaken the argument advanced by the city councilors. So it will either be irrelevant or strengthen their argument. And remember, their argument is that bus fares should be raised, since under the current system, they benefit people from outside the city.

(A) tells us that businesses would leave if the fares were increased, and the businesses benefit the taxpayers. Well, that means the fares probably shouldn’t be increased, so this weakens the argument.

(B) tells us that increasing the fares would make air pollution worse and increase the cost of street maintenance. This also suggests that the fares probably shouldn’t be increased, and so weakens the argument.

(C) tells us that increasing the fares would disadvantage lower-income people who don’t pay taxes, and the city councilors agree that they should be able to ride the buses. Well, that’s a reason to not increase the fares, so this again weakens.

(E) tells us that people who live outside the city actually do pay taxes. So then the taxes are benefitting people who pay them, which gets rid of the reason to need to raise the fares, so (E) weakens the argument.

(D), however, tells us that voters in the city are strongly opposed to increasing local taxes. But here, we’re talking about raising bus fares, not about local taxes. So this is just completely irrelevant to the argument. Since this is irrelevant, it doesn’t weaken, and (D) is the correct answer choice.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.